PayPal ends business dealings with Alex Jones's Infowars

FILE PHOTO: Alex Jones of Infowars talks to the media while visiting the U.S. Senate's Dirksen Senate office building as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) - Payments processor PayPal Holdings Inc said on Friday it decided to end its business relationship with popular U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones's Infowars website after finding instances of hate speech and discriminatory content on the site.

The move makes PayPal the latest tech company to take action against Jones, a deeply controversial right-wing radio talk-show host who has suggested that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, among other sensational claims.

"We've made a decision to end our relationship with Infowars websites, including PrisonPlanet," a PayPal spokesman said.

Companies such as Apple Inc, Twitter Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Facebook Inc have also banned Infowars and content produced by Jones.

"We undertook an extensive review of the Infowars sites, and found instances that promoted hate or discriminatory intolerance against certain communities and religions, which run counter to our core value of inclusion," the PayPal spokesman said.

(Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru and Anna Irrera in New York; Editing by Maju Samuel)